Are you happy with your email marketing results?

If the answer is “no,” you’re not alone.

Almost 54 percent of all emails sent out are classified as spam. And currently, the average email open rate is 22.8 percent while the click through rate (CTR) is just 3.7 percent. Many business owners don’t see such figures as optimal. Luckily, the effectiveness of an email marketing campaign can be increased in a couple of ways.

In case you’re reluctant about fine-tuning your strategy, do understand the fact there are four billion daily email users out there and some of them definitely belong to the audience you want to address! Also, for every dollar spent on email marketing, the return on investment is an impressive 42 dollars. That number ranks email marketing campaigns among the most effective ones, as long as they’re executed correctly.

Whenever your newsletters and emails to clients fail to deliver the expected outcome, chances are that the message delivery approach isn’t personalized enough. If you’d like to make your emails stronger and ensure a higher level of engagement, here are some of the steps you may want to employ the next time around.

Start Doing Segmentation

As already mentioned, you need to make your campaigns as personalized as possible.

Email marketing companies always recommend segmentation as one of the best options to accomplish the goal.

Put in simple terms, segmentation refers to sending different emails to different groups of people – loyal clients, prospects, people who have come to your website and who have completed a certain action, etc. These people are at a very specific stage of their customer journey and you cannot get results by addressing all of them in the same way.

You can segment your emails by age groups, by other demographic characteristics, by customer type (new client vs. loyal, returning customers) or by type of content (informative, promotional, discounts and special offers for loyal clients, etc.).

Not only does segmentation increase campaign effectiveness, it also simplifies the process of tracking email marketing results and determining which approach yields the best results.

Optimize for Mobile Devices

If you aren’t making your emails mobile-friendly, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to connect with many prospects.

As of 2021, 61.9 percent of email opens occur on a mobile device like a smartphone or a tablet. About three in five people check their email on a smartphone while they’re on the go. What’s even more important, emails that display incorrectly on a mobile device are going to get deleted in three seconds about 70 percent of the time.

Poor mobile display looks unprofessional, which is why people aren’t going to take your message seriously (no matter how good it is).

Mobile optimization isn’t that difficult to accomplish, especially if you partner up with the right email marketing company. This is one of the essentials that professionals will pay attention to, making sure that the campaign is displayed cohesively across all devices.

Generally speaking, font and button size, image quality and ease of swiping are all crucial for sufficient mobile responsiveness. A general rule of thumb is to always test your emails on the respective device before sending out. Putting yourself in the recipient’s shoes will reveal a lot about the quality of your email content.

Continue Personalizing on the Basis of Customer Behavior

Adjusting your message in accordance with your audience’s behavior is one of the drip marketing essentials and it also works incredibly well for email promotions.

When they receive your very first message, leads and clients will respond in one of several ways. The next email you send out should be based on the specific client action and the outcome you want to get.

This is yet another way to achieve personalization and it works exceptionally well with segmentation. Tracking audience behaviors and making your message relevant isn’t always easy (there are tools for the purpose but you’ll still need to come up with the right kind of content). Still, such efforts will pay off by ensuring the best possible campaign return on investment.

Make Your Content Difficult to Resist

Content creation is the most creative and most challenging aspect of putting together solid email marketing strategies.

The content will determine whether people are going to read through the email and undertake a course of action you deem desirable.

Good content has several key aspects:

  • A catchy and brief subject line (here are some examples to get you inspired!)
  • Excellent opening that gets the reader hooked (an opening line like Yup, it’s us again is definitely a much better choice than Hello [subscriber name] and welcome to our newsletter)
  • Strong, bold and concise body – always keep it to the point
  • An easy to follow call to action

Don’t be afraid of putting some creativity and humor in your emails, even if you’d like to keep them formal. There are ways to introduce subtle playfulness that’s going to be enjoyed even if you’re doing a serious B2B campaign.

Don’t underestimate the importance of making your copy crisp and memorable. If you don’t have the skills to pull out such text, don’t hesitate seeking out email marketing services. While writing an email may seem like a simple task, you risk creating boring and bland content in the absence of adequate copywriting knowledge.

Always Track Results and Change Your Strategy on the Go

Email marketing, just like all other inbound promotional approaches, gives you the power to track results immediately after the newsletters are sent out. You can easily determine the open rate, the conversions and the parts of the campaign that performed in the most outstanding way.

Use this data to your advantage.

It’s ok to change some aspects of a campaign while it’s ongoing. The feedback you get after sending out the first few emails will let you know whether you’re on track or you’re not accomplishing campaign goals. In the event of poor performance, you can always test out some additional personalization that’s based on the data you gathered.

Changing something can be as simple as sending emails at a different time of the day. You could also come up with better design, a more powerful message or a clearer call to action that will appeal to your audience.

Don’t be afraid of change – it’s one of the most positive aspects of doing digital marketing. Even if the new aspects of the campaign don’t give you the best outcome, you’d still be collecting valuable data that will enable better marketing results in the future.